ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
A Neural Basis for Control of Cichlid Female Reproductive Behavior by Prostaglandin F2α.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
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40 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The neuroendocrine basis for parental care in teleost fish.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Structural and Biophysical Analyses of Human Prostamide/Prostaglandin F Synthase with Two Active Form-Mimicking Mutations.Biomolecules · 2026Article
- Cichlid fishes.Nature methods · 2025Article
- A pheromone receptor in cichlid fish mediates attraction to females but inhibits male parental care.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Mate choice in the brain: species differ in how male traits 'turn on' gene expression in female brains.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Androgen receptor alpha deficiency impacts aromatase expression in the female cichlid brain.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Androgen receptor deficiency is associated with reduced aromatase expression in the ventromedial hypothalamus of male cichlids.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Article
- Mating behaviors in ovoviviparous black rockfish (Marine life science & technology · 2024Article
- Sex diversity in the 21st century: Concepts, frameworks, and approaches for the future of neuroendocrinology.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Genome editing in East African cichlids and tilapias: state-of-the-art and future directions.Open biology · 2023Review
- Pheromone Perception in Fish: Mechanisms and Modulation by Internal Status.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- Breaking Through the Bottleneck: Krogh's Principle in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and the Potential of Gene Editing.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- No evidence for sex chromosomes in natural populations of the cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- East African cichlid fishes.EvoDevo · 2023Review
- Prostaglandin FProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Knock-out of vasotocin reduces reproductive success in female zebrafish,Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Article
- Genetic dissection of steroid-hormone modulated social behavior: Novel paralogous genes are a boon for discovery.Hormones and behavior · 2023Review
- Prostaglandin ECommunications biology · 2022Article
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9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
In most species, females time reproduction to coincide with fertility. Thus, identifying factors that signal fertility to the brain can provide access to neural circuits that control sexual behaviors. In vertebrates, levels of key signaling molecules rise at the time of fertility to prime the brain for reproductive behavior [1-11], but how and where they regulate neural circuits is not known [12, 13]. Specifically, 17α,20β-dihydroxyprogesterone (DHP) and prostaglandin F2α (PGF2α) levels rise in teleost fish around the time of ovulation [10, 14, 15]. In an African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, fertile females select a mate and perform a stereotyped spawning routine, offering quantifiable behavioral outputs of neural circuits. We show that, within minutes, PGF2α injection activates a naturalistic pattern of sexual behavior in female A. burtoni. We also identify cells in the brain that transduce the prostaglandin signal to mate and show that the gonadal steroid DHP modulates mRNA levels of the putative receptor for PGF2α (Ptgfr). We use CRISPR/Cas9 to generate the first targeted gene mutation in A. burtoni and show that Ptgfr is necessary for the initiation of sexual behavior, uncoupling sexual behavior from reproductive status. Our findings are consistent with a model in which PGF2α communicates fertility status via Ptgfr to circuits in the brain that drive female sexual behavior. Our targeted genome modification in a cichlid fish shows that dissection of gene function can reveal basic control mechanisms for behaviors in this large family of species with diverse and fascinating social systems [16, 17].
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.